


Third Time Pays for All

by russian_blue



Category: The Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 03:20:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4247376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russian_blue/pseuds/russian_blue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It seems I've misjudged you once again, youngling. I'll not do that a third time, be assured."</p>
<p>Or, how George Cooper was wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Time Pays for All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [innie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/gifts).



The first man who ever taught George Cooper thieving wasn't much of a thief, but he did pass along one valuable lesson.

"You got to learn to sit still," he would say, cuffing the boy. The blow wasn't meant to hurt, but it always sent George sprawling just the same. He was skinny as a bone back then, getting his height long before his weight. "You fidget, you make noise. Draw people's eyes. You got to sit still."

The lesson stuck. As George finished stabling the horse and went to wait outside his mother's house, he didn't fidget, didn't pace a trench into the ground like he wanted to. He didn't even listen at the keyhole. He stood with his shoulders leaned casually against the wall, and gave no sign that his mind was spinning like a top.

Alan of Trebond was _Alanna_ of Trebond.

Alan of Trebond was a girl.

Climbing in George's window without so much as a by-your-leave, dropping that on him when his heart hadn't yet slowed from almost knifing the lad. The lass. George felt like smacking his head against the wall a few times, to see if that would fix anything.

His own words mocked him, ringing incessantly in his ears. _It seems I've misjudged you once again, youngling. I'll not do that a third time, be assured._

George Cooper, King of Idiots.

The first time was understandable. He had some experience of nobles, and knew what the other thieves said. The righteous ones made bad friends, because sooner or later it would claw at their consciences, knowing their drinking companion was a rogue. And the ones who weren't righteous . . . sooner or later they stopped seeing the rogue as a friend, started seeing him as a servant. A man to do the dirty work while they kept their hands clean.

So when Alan -- Alanna -- brought up Ralon, George leapt to the obvious conclusion. And, to his great relief, found he was wrong. _Mithros_ , he swore silently, remembering. All that time scrapping with the lad, teaching every vicious trick the street had to offer, and he hadn't noticed. Not that there was much to notice on an eleven-year-old of either sex -- though come to think of it, hadn't there been a knee to the purse that "Alan" shrugged off with surprising ease?

Then the Prince. George knew by then that Alan had courage, maybe even a bit of recklessness; he wouldn't have taken on Ralon of Malven without it. He didn't know the lad would show up at George's door with the Crown Prince of Tortall in tow. Alan said it was "for fun," but George still thought it came from an odd impulse toward honesty: Alan might be friends with a man as crooked as they came, the King of the Court of the Rogue himself, but he didn't want to hide that fact. Not from anyone else he called friend.

And damn if _that_ didn't make a bit more sense now.

But third time paid for all, as the people of the Lower City said. Those first two surprises were nothing next to this third one, the one he had sworn wouldn't happen.

And it hit George in the gut hard enough to steal his breath, when he let himself stop to think. Alanna had Gary and Jonathan, Sir Myles and Raoul. She had Coram, and if that man didn't know her secret, George would eat his entire collection of severed ears. She could have gone to the Temple of the Great Goddess for help.

Instead she came to George.

If he was being honest with himself, he didn't know which spun his head more: the fact that Alanna was a girl -- and had managed to hide that from him since she was ten -- or that she trusted him that much. Oh, he could tell himself he was safer than the boys and men at the palace. After all, he wasn't part of that world, the knights and the chivalry and all the rest. He couldn't send her home in disgrace.

But he was a rogue, and she . . . trusted him.

That old thief had taught George to stay still, and so he didn't jump clear out of his skin when his mother opened the door a few feet away, saying, "Stop listening at keyholes, my son."

Any other night, any other situation, he probably _would_ have been eavesdropping. But not tonight: the tight worry on Alanna's face, too controlled to be called panic but awfully close to that name, had killed his instinct to curiosity. Her privacy, and her peace of mind, mattered more. Once invited, though, George lost not an instant before coming inside.

He stepped over more that one threshold that night. She said in later years that "Alanna" was only "Alan" with the truth being told, but that wasn't quite true. A person wasn't just herself; she was all her relationships with the people around her, too. And those relationships changed with the name.

Near on three years went by before he realized just how much this one had changed, and him with it. The George who was friends with Alan was not the George who was friends with Alanna. That earlier George didn't have a friend who trusted him with a secret this large. He didn't see himself as the kind of man who _deserved_ that trust, didn't have the impulse to live up to it as best he could. George at eighteen expected -- if he ever would have admitted it to himself -- that he would end with a knife between his own shoulders before he saw twenty-five, just as he'd done for the Rogue before him. He probably _would_ have ended that way, because he wouldn't have been as good a king to his people, and kept their loyalty for so long.

When others asked later on, he gave them all kinds of answers. Her eyes: she was no beauty as court judged such things, too stocky and fierce, but her eyes were as purple as good amethysts, and a man could think all sorts of foolishness when they came to rest on him. The prompting of his Gift: that one was true as far as it went, since it was his Gift that made him seek "Alan" out when the boy left the palace. The fact that she was the one woman he knew who wouldn't scream if she happened across his collection of ears.

But the truth was that he fell in love with Alanna because of that night, when she was twelve and afraid and she trusted him. Because she kept surprising him, in the best sense possible. Because she met him halfway: came down into the streets far enough to see and accept his life, but inspired him to be more than just the Rogue.

To be a better man.

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this fic has left me with a random itch to give George's perspective on *all* the scenes with him and Alanna, because I bet there's all kinds of entertaining stuff to be found there. But when you said you were interested in why he falls for Alanna, this is the scene I immediately went to, when he was stuck outside his mother's house in the middle of the night, reeling from Alanna's revelation. I hope you enjoyed it!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Third Time Pays for All [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6606865) by [Morvidra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morvidra/pseuds/Morvidra)




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